I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

Quote

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack ofsoftware running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the gameand the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

The one demo that's available, Stomping Grounds, is Windows-only, DirectX-based. I guess they went with the C/C++ API and are using Java only on the server side with Darkstar... I guess that's one way to get some exposure to the majority of game developers... makes a lot of sense really.. but I'm sitting here with my Mac.

Anyway.. I certainly hope the client-side Java games look good beside it, or it will just be used as ammo for the "Java games can't compare" argument. I don't mean to complain really... I suspect this time Sun will pull it off.

After a quick skim, through the tutorials, it looks great. It needs a much closer read in slow time though. I like the scaleability, which is a great commercial selling point. Just learning how it works is going to be a networking masterclass in itself

I notice that there are a number of server related services & also support for peer-peer (which routes through Level 0 & 1 I think). Need to understand this better, as obviously bandwidth usage is a major factor. Not now though, got to get to work.

I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

Quote

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack ofsoftware running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the gameand the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

These are rough estimates. What it really depends on is how many events have to get pushed through the slice per unit time. We can probably handle a lot more than 500 users for some kinds of games, and fewer than 200 for pathological cases. Asking how many users a slice can support is a little like asking how fast a computer is without naming the benchmark!

It is rather embarrassing that Stomping Grounds is a Windows executable running on DirectX though, isn't it.... another snafu...

Cas

How so? A very happy external customer used our client-agnostic, language-agnostic platform to build a product solid enough to roll out for our launch. It's all good.

If you're a Java advocate, then you might be disappointed that the game isn't pure Java, but ProjectDarkStar isn't about Java advocacy. It's about making the customer happy and productive, and if that requires Windows, so be it.

I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

Quote

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack ofsoftware running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the gameand the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

These are rough estimates. What it really depends on is how many events have to get pushed through the slice per unit time. We can probably handle a lot more than 500 users for some kinds of games, and fewer than 200 for pathological cases. Asking how many users a slice can support is a little like asking how fast a computer is without naming the benchmark!

Reading the Programming guide a second time I can see why those numbers seem low to me:Every single little game object being checked out/in of storage, instantiated in copies for every get/peek and synchronized between hosts in the cluster must come with a quite high performance price. But the potential benefits from scalability and fault tolerance probably more than makes up for this. You can get 5-10 cheap PCs for the price of 1 server with ECC Ram and the works, and with good scalability these should easily be able to outperform the server machine.

It is rather embarrassing that Stomping Grounds is a Windows executable running on DirectX though, isn't it.... another snafu...

If it uses the SGS from C++ that's just another plus for SGS, isn't it? It's all about perspective... they need such a title to attract the ignorant C/C++ devs that would otherwise dismiss it because it was "that slow Java stuff that nobody uses for games".

The real embarrassment is that after using Windows and downloading the Stomping Grounds demo from their site, I STILL can't play because the idiot thing won't launch if you have a debugger running... Sorry, I'm not rebooting just to play your game.

As a development manager I'm very wary of mixing platforms on server and client, basically because you've got to write the code twice if it's in two different languages. The serverside representation of game world objects often needs to be exactly the same on the client. I wouldn't want to have to write the same objects in C++ and then again in Java. Just a thought.

But even so... big shame there was no Java client to show it off. After all these years of trying to get Java on the desktop for gaming...